So what is Apple offering to make you rush to the doctor’s office right away for a quote? Let’s take a look at the latest announcements and see whether or not it is worth upgrading.

Live Photos

A photo used to be just a still image of a person, event, whatever. Everything in the picture was frozen in time, and unable to be altered. But that all changed when Apple got their hands on it.

With previous models of iPhones, you snapped a picture and that was that. With the iPhone 6s, a new feature called “Live Photos” means that when you click the shutter to take the photo, the phone now also includes what happened a few seconds before, and a few seconds after, your shutter press. This in effect creates a “Live Photo” which moves when you touch the screen with your finger.

Advantages to this are numerous. The main one being when you photograph someone — say a child — and they have their eyes closed, or they are staring to the right when they should be looking straight ahead… you know, the usual stuff. Now you can get a couple of seconds before and after the shot to see them in a much better light.

The iPhone 6s now has a 12 megapixel camera and can shoot 4K video, which is four times higher than HD video (“paging Steven Spielberg…”). The front-facing Facetime camera now captures far less grainy 5 megapixel images — which means better selfies, at last. Apple has set up a photo gallery to show off exactly what’s possible with the iPhone 6s camera. Check it out.

Apple also claims that with the new iMovie, you can edit two movie streams at the same time, and have effects such as a picture inside another picture, as well as split-screens. At this stage, I am already salivating, and getting ready to auction off everything I own to buy the new model.

3D Touch

3D Touch is another way of saying “push your finger right through your screen”. The technology essentially allows you to differentiate between screen presses based on the pressure you apply.

Using the camera as an example again, if you press hard on the camera icon, you can take a selfie or a video. Hard pressing on Facebook lets you change your status. You can preview new email in Mail with a feature called Peek and Pop — hard pressing on Mail lets you “peek” at your messages but if you want to open one, keep hard-pressing and it will “pop” open.

You can peek and pop with Safari too. If you receive a link in your email, you can “peek” at the website without opening Safari fully. If you want the page open fully, hard-press more and Safari will open with the page.

Stronger Than Ever Before

iPhone owners who are in the habit of dropping their phones and smashing the display will be pleased to learn that the iPhone 6S is now stronger than ever before. In fact, this is a point that Apple seems to want to stress over and over.

The metal used in the construction of the iPhone 6s is called 7000 Series aluminium, which seemingly is the same strength of metal used by the aerospace industry. Apple’s attempts to make the iPhone hardier also extended to the glass display as well.

Of course, images will still surface on release day of people who dropped their phones on their way home from the Apple store…

Under the Hood Improvements

As is par for the course with every new iPhone release, Apple has put a brand new A9 processor into the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, including a new M9 motion co-processor. The new chip offers 70 percent faster CPU performance and 90 percent faster GPU performance over the previous A8 found in the iPhone 6.

The M9 co-processor keeps track of movement, taking the strain off the GPS chip and ensuring higher accuracy and lower power consumption when using location services. Apple has also improved the efficiency of the A9, which means the same operations now take up less power than they did on previous iPhones.

Also expected is an increase in the number of LTE bands now compatible with the iPhone, taking the number to 23 — more than any other smartphone, at the time of writing.

A New Color!

Finally, who could miss the new lick of paint. All of the old colors are still there – gold, silver, and space grey. But now we have a new color — “rose gold” — otherwise known as “pink”.

So Should I Upgrade?

This is the million dollar question isn’t it? I guess it all comes down to the following :

How long ago did you get your last model? If you have an iPhone 6 or 5s your device probably has plenty of life left in it yet.

Bias much?
New technology is a good thing.
Competition is a good thing.
I won't buy one right now, my current phone is great.
Looking forward, it can only be better.
Too expensive? Look elsewhere; the bar is raised, obviously.

I've already ordered the rose gold 6s plus even though I already had the regular 6 plus due to the faster wifi, the live photo feature and the multi-touch stuff. I wanted to hold out until iphone 7 but I guess I couldn't resist, plus I love the rose gold color.

I heard multiple rumors that the 6S was going to finally upgrade the memory from 1GB to 2GB. I assume this hardware upgrade didn't get put in this model unfortunately. Can anyone confirm? I was really hoping for 2GB of memory. Not sure what Apple is waiting for. I can only assume cost.The camera on the iPhone 6 is just fine for most users. All users would get a big benefit from 2GB of RAM. Apple is the only smartphone in the top tier with only 1GB of memory. Some smartphones have 4GB!! I love the iPhone, but for the cost, this is one upgrade way past due. Definitely not getting the 6S.

I carry an old, hand-me-down, dumb cellphone for emergencies. Other than a wrong number, nobody has called me on it in over a year. I have used to a couple of times to call 911 to report road accidents, luckily not my own.

Mark O'Neill is a freelance journalist and bibliophile, who has been getting stuff published since 1989. For 6 years, he was the Managing Editor of MakeUseOf. Now he writes, drinks too much tea, arm-wrestles with his dog, and writes some more. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook.